By Donald H. Harrison
EL CAJON, California — During Tata Twins: The Remix, a play modernizing the ancient Greek playwright Plautus’s The Twin Menaechmus and similar farces based on mistaken identities, we first meet “Lady Tata” (Stephanie Johnson) shouting the F-word as she emerges from her Hollywood mansion. Thereafter, not one of her spoken lines seemed complete without the obscenity. The Lady Tata character’s speech pattern reminded me of my drill sergeant’s during my Army basic training.
However, I had my grandson Shor seated with me in the Stagehouse Theatre audience, so I felt a little uncomfortable even though theatre arts faculty member Jeanette Thomas, who adapted the play for Grossmont College, warned us that there was “adult” language which was not intended to shock, but rather to reflect modern times.
Afterwards, I asked Shor, 10, what he felt about all those curse words.
“I really liked them!” he declared.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I’m 10,” he responded.
There must have been inner ten-year-olds within many members of the audience who watched the matinee on Saturday, December 3rd, because after a while the word became simply a sound, as meaningless as the phrases “you know” or “um,” which — I’m pleased to report– were not much in evidence during this student production.
Additionally, Lady Tata’s executive assistant (don’t call her a secretary), “Blackberry” (Layla Stuckey) inserted into nearly every piece of screamed dialogue such marginally relevant texting abbreviations as “OMG,” “WTF,” and “LOL.” Whereas the plot of the farce may be older than that of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, the language is as up-to-date as your iPad.
The plot of the story was quite simple, Lady Tata and Stefani (Alexa Deen) are twins, but they were separated at birth. One grew into a rock star, the other become a sweet and somewhat naive Midwestern girl. With her friend Biffy (Hannah Hedgecock), who speaks in a cartoon voice, Stefani travels to the west coast to try to meet her famous sister, who is absolutely unaware of her. When she finds her way to Lady Tata’s gated community, people assume that her simple mode of dress means Lady Tata has taken up a new mode of disguise.
There is no attempt to hide the similarity between “Lady Tata” and the real-life “Lady Gaga.” Songs like “I Was Born This Way” are piped in to underline the point. A cook who works at the mansion next door, Martha Ray (Katlyn Pavlica), even despairs of preparing dinner for Lady Tata, given the fact that the last time the rock star came over for the dinner, she took all her meat and turned it into a dress!
Until near the play’s conclusion, Lady Tata and Stefani are never face-to-face on stage (although in one scene they are back-to-back). In that Lady Tata constantly changes outfits anyway, other characters just assume that the person they saw a minute before in an exotic outfit has quick changed into the Midwestern-school-girl outfit on a whim. Even Lady Tata’s husband, the forever-posing Alejandro (Aaron Duggan) and her lover next door, the always-pouting Boid (Jake Rosko) can’t tell the difference between the twins.
Under the direction of Beth Duggan, who heads Grossmont’s theatre arts department, things get even crazier with the addition to the cast of Alejandro’s mother (Kate Hewitt) and his wheelchair-racing grandmother (A.J. Duvall). The story unfolds in front of a fountain that is between the homes of Alejandro and Boid and at one point, with plastic flamingoes, these two rivals for Lady Tata’s hand have a thumb wrestling showdown and also fight a Star Wars-type duel. Duggan’s preening as Alejandro particularly delighted the audience.
Adding to the fun and the Keystone Cops feeling of the play are “FB,” (Yvette Angulo) a video-game playing assistant who constantly snaps photos of Lady Tata to be tweeted and sent on Facebook to her fans; an easily confused security guard (James Gomez); a paparazi (Ryan Casselman) and, dare I say it, a “mamarazzi” (Jamie Trevino), as well as television personality Cooper Anderson (Adrian Brown), all of whom serve as foils, diversions (other characters need to change costumes), or extras to assure the small stage is never devoid of often riotous action.
The play continues its run at 7:30 p.m., Dec. 7, 8, 9, and 10, with a 2 p.m. matinee on the 10th. Tickets are available through the Grossmont College box office at (619) 644-7234.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com